Journalism goes truly mobile now

Saturday

Sep 29, 2012 at 6:00 AM

Bill Fortier From the deck

Maybe it’s all this talk about mobile journalists and how we’re filing stories from places other than an office.

Or maybe it was a few days ago when I stumbled across a movie called “Phone Booth” where a fairly obnoxious yuppie type was trapped in a telephone booth by a sniper determined to make his life as difficult as possible.

At any rate, it got your loyal scribe to thinking back to the day when there actually were telephone booths — or as my friends who used to work for Verizon call them, pay stations.

Years ago — maybe about 20 — I did a story about what we could look forward to in the future, and the person on the other end of the phone line said there would be a time when everybody would have something called a cellphone and when that happened telephone booths would be obsolete.

As readers of this column no doubt know, when it comes to modern technology yours truly is not exactly cutting edge; so as far as I was concerned, it was the stuff of science fiction. I have to say, however, I am enjoying my company-issued iPhone, especially the way it lets me check the weather. I am mystified, though, by the fact that if I check the weather icon when I’m upstairs in our house it gives a reading from Auburn but when I go downstairs it says I’m in Oxford. When I checked it Thursday morning I was surprised to see I was in North Oxford.

Mobile journalist indeed.

At any rate, it turns out the futurist I was talking to was correct.

So the rise of cellphones has had a lot to do with the demise of pay stations. I’m told by those who know about these things that increasing vandalism also played a role in their almost complete disappearance. Still, I have to think there has got to be more than one former and perhaps present telephone company worker who has a telephone booth somewhere in his house.

Anybody who has used telephone booths through the years can talk in detail about phone booths in disrepair. I remember covering a story years ago in Auburn before cellphones existed. There was a telephone booth that didn’t have a door in front of the police station when it was on Route 12. It was raining heavily that windy day and I got splashed repeatedly by vehicles as I phoned in my story.

I think it’s fair to say Superman didn’t have to deal with that while he was fighting crime and reporting stories, not that I ever saw him actually cover a story.

Speaking of vandalism, a friend of mine is on the road a lot and he recalled the day he went into a telephone booth in Hartford and picked up a telephone in which the earpiece was covered with motor oil. He also remembered one time when he had to use a roofless telephone booth in Lynn while local pigeons took aim on him with unerring precision.

My usual voluminous research turned up the 411 on a telephone that was in the middle of the Mojave Desert until it was closed about 15 years ago. One story on the phone listed its telephone number, and when I called it, I was informed the party I was seeking was unavailable.

Evidently, telephone booths and pay stations are still common in the United Kingdom, where a source tells me they are easy to find in London. That’s a lot different from Gotham City where, reportedly, there are only four left.

Telephone booths have certainly played a major role in lots of movies and television shows besides “Phone Booth.”

Many of us recall the scene in “The Birds” when Tippi Hedren was attacked in a telephone booth, and the beginning of Get Smart when Maxwell Smart would make a call before plunging downward.

And we all know what happened to anybody who used a telephone booth in the old “Untouchables” show.